Those working behind the counter, however, weren't interested in selling anything. They were undercover agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives running a storefront sting aimed at busting criminal operations in the city by purchasing drugs and guns from felons. But the effort to date has not snared any major dealers or taken down a gang. Instead, it resulted in a string of mistakes and failures, including an ATF military-style machine gun landing on the streets of Milwaukee and the agency having $35,000 in merchandise stolen from its store, a Journal Sentinel investigation has found. When the 10-month operation was shut down after the burglary, agents and Milwaukee police officers who participated in the sting cleared out the store but left behind a sensitive document that listed names, vehicles and phone numbers of undercover agents.

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Not only that, but the agents made life miserable for their landlord.

And the agency remains locked in a battle with the building's owner, who says he is owed about $15,000 because of utility bills, holes in the walls, broken doors and damage from an overflowing toilet.

ATF agents befriended mentally disabled people to drum up business and later arrested them in at least four cities in addition to Milwaukee. In Wichita, Kan., ATF agents referred to a man with a low IQ as "slow-headed" before deciding to secretly use him as a key cog in their sting. And agents in Albuquerque, N.M., gave a brain-damaged drug addict with little knowledge of weapons a "tutorial" on machine guns, hoping he could find them one.

And...

Agents pressed suspects for specific firearms that could fetch tougher penalties in court. They allowed felons to walk out of the stores armed with guns. In Wichita, agents suggested a felon take a shotgun, saw it off and bring it back - and provided instructions on how to do it. The sawed-off gun allowed them to charge the man with a more serious crime.

Also, too...

In Pensacola, the ATF hired a felon to run its pawnshop. The move widened the pool of potential targets, boosting arrest numbers. Even those trying to sell guns legally could be charged if they knowingly sold to a felon. The ATF's pawnshop partner was later convicted of pointing a loaded gun at someone outside a bar. Instead of a stiff sentence typically handed down to repeat offenders in federal court, he got six months in jail - and a pat on the back from the prosecutor.

Law enforcement in this country has two major problems these days. One is the steady militarization of its functions, even at the local level. The other can best be described as a too-clever-by-half problem. Bureaucrats devising clever-dick schemes like this one, skirting entrapment if not falling into entirely, with no oversight and -- if the newspaper is correct -- even less interest in developing any. Conviction rates -- like the old body counts in Vietnam -- are the only things that matter. Spiffy operational names coupled with a sweet-tooth for covert, undercover operations are preferable to actual detective work. This is plainly what has occurred here, and people who are interested in trying to reverse this country's insane attraction to its firearms should be angrier than anyone else at this foolishness. The ATF looks like armed clowns here, and this kind of thing does nothing except validate the paranoia out there among the gun-fondlers.

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Rep. James Sensenbrenner, who represents Milwaukee, held a hearing into all this today. "To say that the operation was extremely flawed would be a vast understatement," he said. "The operation was an abysmal failure that put on the street a stolen fully automatic M-4 rifle as well as other stolen firearms among numerous other failures." Thomas Brandon, the deputy director of the ATF, argued that the programs that had gone wrong all had occurred under the previous ATF leadership, which may be true, but which doesn't matter a damn.

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